A. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to telephone systems and in particular to a no answer mode for telephone lines.
B. Prior Art
The telephone is the major means of communication in business, industry, government and social intercourse. The telephone, however, is inefficient with respect to the time wasted on calls which are not answered. To complete the 280 billion calls made annually in the United States, 600 billion call attempts are required. Of the 180 billion failures, 90 billion are "busies" and the same number are "don't answers". Thus, only 7 out of 10 calls are completed on the first attempt.
In prior art systems, such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,570,008, when a called line was not answered, the calling party received a ringing tone corresponding to the ringing of the unanswered telephone. The time wasted on an average "don't answer" is 18 seconds.
It is known in the art to provide telephone answering machines. Answering machines, when activated, detected an incoming call and, after a predetermined number of rings, answered the call. These machines delivered a message determined and stored in the machine on magnetic tape by the called party. The calling party could then record a message for the called party on magnetic tape provided within the answering machine. The called party could, at a later time, retrieve this message from the magnetic tape.